What is Darwinism? Part 6

A second fact which attests the primordial character and fixedness of species is, that every species as it first appears, is not in a transition state between one form and another, but in the perfection of its kind. Science has indeed discovered an ascending order in creation, which agrees marvellously with that given in the book of Genesis: first, vegetable productions; then the moving creatures in the sea; then terrestrial animals; and finally man. Naturalists, who utterly reject the Scriptures as a divine revelation, speak with the highest admiration of the Mosaic account of the creation, as compared with any other cosmogony of the ancient world. While there is in general an ascending series in these living forms, each was perfect in its kind.

Aga.s.siz says that fishes existed contemporaneously with species of all the invertebrate sub-kingdoms in the Taconic, or sub-Cambrian strata.

This is the extreme limit of known geological strata in which life is found to have existed. As the evolution of one species out of another requires, according to Darwin, millions of years, it is out of the question to trace these animals beyond the strata in which their remains are now found. Yet "crabs or lobsters, worms, cuttle-fish, snails, jelly-fish, star-fish, oysters, the polyps lived contemporaneously with the first known vertebrate animals that ever came into being--all as clearly defined by unmistakable ordinal or special characters as they are at the present moment."[52]

The foot of the horse is considered by zoologists as "one of the most beautiful contrivances in nature." The remains of this animal found in what is called the Pliocene Period, show the foot to have been as perfect then as it is now.

Mr. Wallace says that man has existed on the earth a hundred thousand years, and that it is probable that he existed four hundred thousand years ago. Of course we do not believe this. We have little faith in the chronology of science. It gives no sure data for the calculation of time, hence we find them differing from four thousand to four hundred thousand years as to the time required for certain formations. The most trustworthy geologists teach that all that is known of the antiquity of man falls within the limits of Biblical chronology. The further, however, Darwinians push back the origin of man, the stronger, as against them, becomes the argument for the immutability of species. The earliest remains of man show that at his first appearance, he was in perfection. The oldest known human skull is that called the "Engis,"

because found in the cave of Engis in Belgium. Of this skull Professor Huxley says it may have belonged to an individual of one of the existing races of men. Princ.i.p.al Dawson, who has a cast of it, on the same shelf with the skulls of some Algonquin Indians, says it might be taken for the skull of an American Indian. Indeed, Dawson seems to think that these fossil human remains go to show that the earliest men were better developed than any of the extant races.

Thirdly. The historical evidence accessible all goes to prove the immutability of species. The earliest historical records and the oldest monuments prove that all extant animals were what they now are thousands of years ago.

Fourthly. The fact that hybrids cannot be perpetuated, that no device of man can produce a new species, is proof that G.o.d has fixed limits which cannot be pa.s.sed. This Huxley himself admits to be an insuperable objection. So long as it exists, he says, Darwin's doctrine must be content to remain a hypothesis; it cannot pretend to the dignity of a theory. Another fact of like import is that varieties artificially produced, if let alone, uniformly revert to the simple typical form. It is only by the utmost care they can be kept distinct. All the highly prized varieties of horses, cattle, sheep, pigeons, etc., without human control, would be merged each cla.s.s into one, with only the slight differences occasioned by diversities of climate and other external conditions. If in the sight of man it is important that the words of a book should be kept distinct, it is equally evident that in the sight of G.o.d it is no less important that the "units of nature" should not be mixed in inextricable and indistinguishable confusion.

Fifthly. The sudden appearance of new kinds of animals is another fact which Palaeontologists urge against the doctrine of evolution. According to the view of geologists great changes have, at remote periods, occurred in the state of the earth. Continents have been submerged and the bottom of the sea raised above the surface of the waters.

Corresponding changes have occurred in the state of the atmosphere surrounding the globe, and in the temperature of the earth. Accompanying or following these revolutions new cla.s.ses of plants and animals appear, adapted to the new condition of the earth's surface. Whence do they come? They have, as Dawson expresses it, neither fathers nor mothers.

Nothing precedes them from which they could be derived; and nothing of the same kind follows them. They live through their appointed period; and then, in a mult.i.tude of cases, finally disappear, and are in their turn followed by new orders or kinds. In other words, the links or connecting forms of this a.s.sumed regular succession or derivation are not to be found. This fact is so patent, that Hugh Miller, when arguing against the doctrine of evolution as proposed in the "Vestiges of Creation," says, that the record in the rocks seems to have been written for the very purpose of proving that such evolution is impossible.

We have the explicit testimony of Aga.s.siz, as a Palaeontologist, that the facts of geology contradict the theory of the trans.m.u.tation of species.

This testimony has been repeatedly given and in various forms. In the last production of his pen, he says: "As a Palaeontologist I have from the beginning stood aloof from this new theory of trans.m.u.tation, now so widely admitted by the scientific world. Its doctrines, in fact, contradict what the animal forms buried in the rocky strata of our earth tell us of their own introduction and succession upon the surface of the globe." "Let us look now at the earliest vertebrates, as known and recorded in geological surveys. They should, of course, if there is any truth in the trans.m.u.tation theory, correspond with the lowest in rank or standing. What then are the earliest known vertebrates? They are Selachians (sharks and their allies) and Ganoids (garpikes and the like), the highest of all living fishes, structurally speaking." He closes the article from which these quotations are taken with the a.s.sertion, "that there is no evidence of a direct descent of later from earlier species in the geological succession of animals."[53] It will be observed that Aga.s.siz is quoted, not as to matters of theory, but as to matters of fact. The only answer which evolutionists can make to this argument, is the imperfection of the geological record. When asked, Where are the immediate predecessors of these new species? they answer, They have disappeared, or, have not yet been found. When asked, Where are their immediate successors? the answer again is, They have disappeared.[54] This is an objection which Mr. Darwin, with his usual candor, virtually admits to be unanswerable. We have already seen, that he says, "Every one will admit that the geological record is imperfect; but very few can believe that it is so very imperfect as my theory demands."

Such are some of the grounds on which geologists and palaeontologists of the highest rank a.s.sert that the theory of evolution has not the slightest scientific basis; and they support their a.s.sertion with an amount of evidence of which the above items are a miserable pittance.

Sixthly. There is another consideration of decisive importance. Strauss says, there are three things which have been stumbling-blocks in the way of science. First, the origin of life; second, the origin of consciousness; third, the origin of reason. These are equivalent to the gaps which, Princ.i.p.al Dawson says, exist in the theory of evolution. He states them thus: 1. That between dead and living matter. 2. That between vegetable and animal life. "These are necessarily the converse of each other: the one deoxidizes and acc.u.mulates, the other oxidizes and expends." 3. That "between any species of plant or animal, and any other species. It was this gap, and this only, which Darwin undertook to fill up by his great work on the origin of species, but, notwithstanding the immense amount of material thus expended, it yawns as wide as ever, since it must be admitted that no case has been ascertained in which an individual of one species has transgressed the limits between it and another species." 4. "Another gap is between the nature of the animal and the self-conscious, reasoning, and moral nature of man." (pp.

325-328)

First, as to the gap between death and life; this is what Dr. Stirling calls the "gulf of all gulfs, which Mr. Huxley's protoplasm is as powerless to efface as any other material expedient that has ever been suggested."[55] This gulf Mr. Darwin does not attempt to bridge over. He admits that life owes its origin to the act of the Creator. This, however, the most prominent of the advocates of Darwinism say, is giving up the whole controversy. If you admit the intervention of creative power at one point, you may as well admit it in any other. If life owes its origin to creative power, why not species? If the stupendous miracle of creation be admitted, there is no show of reason for denying supernatural intervention in the operations of nature. Most Darwinians attempt to pa.s.s this gulf on the imaginary bridge of spontaneous generation. In other words, they say there is no gulf there. The molecules of matter, in one combination, may as well exhibit the phenomena of life, as in other combinations, any other kind of phenomena. The distinguished Sir William Thomson cannot trust himself to that bridge. "Dead matter," he says, "cannot become living matter without coming under the influence of matter previously alive. This seems to me as sure a teaching of science as the law of gravitation....

I am ready to adopt, as an article of scientific faith, true through all s.p.a.ce and through all time, that life proceeds from life, and nothing but life."[56] He refers the origin of life on this earth to falling meteors, which bring with them from other planets the germs of living organisms; and from those germs all the plants and animals with which our world is now covered have been derived. Princ.i.p.al Dawson thinks that this was intended as irony. But the whole tone of the address, and specially of the closing portion of it, in which this idea is advanced, is far too serious to admit of such an explanation.

No one can read the address referred to without being impressed, and even awed, by the immensity and grandeur of the field of knowledge which falls legitimately within the domain of science. The perusal of that discourse produces a feeling of humility a.n.a.logous to the sense of insignificance which every man experiences when he thinks of himself as a speck on the surface of the earth, which itself is but a speck in the immensity of the universe. And when a man of mere ordinary culture sees Sir William Thomson surveying that field with a mastery of its details and familiarity with all the recondite methods of its investigation, he feels as nothing in his presence. Yet this great man, whom we cannot help regarding with wonder, is so carried away by the spirit of his cla.s.s as to say, "Science is bound, by the everlasting law of honor, to face fearlessly every problem which can fairly be brought before it. If a probable solution, consistent with the ordinary course of nature, can be found, we must not invoke an abnormal act of Creative Power." And, therefore, instead of invoking Creative Power, he accounts for the origin of life on earth by falling meteors. How he accounts for its origin in the places whence the meteors came, he does not say. Yet Sir William Thomson believes in Creative Power; and in a subsequent page, we shall quote his explicit repudiation of the atheistic element in the Darwinian theory.

Strauss quotes Dubois-Reymond, a distinguished naturalist, as teaching that the first of these great problems, viz. the origin of life, admits of explanation on scientific (i. e., in his sense, materialistic) principles; and even the third, viz. the origin of reason; but the second, or the origin of consciousness, he says, "is perfectly inscrutable." Dubois-Reymond holds that "the most accurate knowledge of the essential organism reveals to us only matter in motion; but between this material movement and my feeling pain or pleasure, experiencing a sweet taste, seeing red, with the conclusion 'therefore I exist,' there is a profound gulf; and it 'remains utterly and forever inconceivable why to a number of atoms of carbon, hydrogen, etc., it should not be a matter of indifference how they lie or how they move; nor, can we in any wise tell how consciousness should result from their concurrent action.'

Whether," adds Strauss, "these _Verba Magistri_ are indeed the last word on the subject, time only can tell."[57] But if it is inconceivable, not to say absurd, that sense-consciousness should consist in the motion of molecules of matter, or be a function of such molecules, it can hardly be less absurd to account for thought, conscience, and religious feeling and belief on any such hypothesis. It may be said that Mr.

Darwin is not responsible for these extreme opinions. That is very true.

Mr. Darwin is not a Monist, for in admitting creation, he admits a dualism as between G.o.d and the world. Neither is he a Materialist, inasmuch as he a.s.sumes a supernatural origin for the infinitesimal modic.u.m of life and intelligence in the primordial animalcule, from which without divine purpose or agency, all living things in the whole history of our earth have descended. All the innumerable varieties of plants, all the countless forms of animals, with all their instincts and faculties, all the varieties of men with their intellectual endowments, and their moral and religious nature, have, according to Darwin, been evolved by the agency of the blind, unconscious laws of nature. This infinitesimal spark of supernaturalism in Mr. Darwin's theory, would inevitably have gone out of itself, had it not been rudely and contemptuously trodden out by his bolder, and more logical successors.

The grand and fatal objection to Darwinism is this exclusion of design in the origin of species, or the production of living organisms. By design is meant the intelligent and voluntary selection of an end, and the intelligent and voluntary choice, application, and control of means appropriate to the accomplishment of that end. That design, therefore, implies intelligence, is involved in its very nature. No man can perceive this adaptation of means to the accomplishment of a preconceived end, without experiencing an irresistible conviction that it is the work of mind. No man does doubt it, and no man can doubt it.

Darwin does not deny it. Haeckel does not deny it. No Darwinian denies it. What they do is to deny that there is any design in nature. It is merely apparent, as when the wind of the Bay of Biscay, as Huxley says, "selects the right kind of sand and spreads it in heaps upon the plains." But in thus denying design in nature, these writers array against themselves the intuitive perceptions and irresistible convictions of all mankind,--a barrier which no man has ever been able to surmount. Sir William Thomson, in the address already referred to, says: "I feel profoundly convinced that the argument of design has been greatly too much lost sight of in recent zoological speculations.

Reaction against the frivolities of teleology, such as are to be found, not rarely, in the notes of the learned commentators on 'Paley's Natural Theology,' has, I believe, had a temporary effect of turning attention from the solid irrefragable argument so well put forward in that excellent old book. But overpowering proof of intelligence and benevolent design lie all around us, and if ever perplexities, whether metaphysical or scientific, turn us away from them for a time, they come back upon us with irresistible force, showing to us through nature the influence of a free will, and teaching us that all living beings depend upon one ever-acting Creator and Ruler."

It is impossible for even Mr. Darwin, inconsistent as it is with his whole theory, to deny all design in the const.i.tution of nature. What is his law of heredity? Why should like beget like? Take two germ cells, one of a plant, another of an animal; no man by microscope or by chemical a.n.a.lysis, or by the magic power of the spectroscope, can detect the slightest difference between them, yet the one infallibly develops into a plant and the other into an animal. Take the germ of a fish and of a bird, and they are equally indistinguishable; yet the one always under all conditions develops into a fish and the other into a bird.

Why is this? There is no physical force, whether light, heat, electricity, or anything else, which makes the slightest approximation to accounting for that fact. To say, as Stuart Mill would say, that it is an ultimate fact, and needs no explanation, is to say that there may be an effect without an adequate cause. The venerable R. E. Von Baer, the first naturalist in Russia, of whom Aga.s.siz speaks in terms of such affectionate veneration in the "Atlantic Monthly" for January, 1874, has written a volume dated Dorpat, 1873, and ent.i.tled "Zum Streit uber den Darwinismus." In that volume, as we learn from a German periodical, the author says: "The Darwinians lay great stress on heredity; but what is the law of heredity but a determination of something future? Is it not in its nature in the highest degree teleological? Indeed, is not the whole faculty of reproduction intended to introduce a new life-process?

When a man looks at a dissected insect and examines its strings of eggs, and asks, Whence are they? the naturalist of our day has no answer to give, but that they were of necessity gradually produced by the changes in matter. When it is further asked, Why are they there? is it wrong to say, It is _in order that_ when the eggs are mature and fertilized, new individuals of the same form should be produced."

It is further to be considered that there are innumerable cases of contrivance, or evidence of design in nature, to which the principle of natural selection, or the purposeless changes effected by unconscious force, cannot apply; as for example, the distinction of s.e.x, with all that is therein involved. But pa.s.sing by such cases, it may be asked, what would it avail to get rid of design in the vegetable and animal kingdom, while the whole universe is full of it? That this ordered Cosmos is not from necessity or chance, is almost a self-evident fact.

Not one man in a million of those who ever heard of G.o.d, either does doubt or can doubt it. Besides how are the cosmical relations of light, heat, electricity, to the const.i.tuent parts of the universe, and especially, so far as this earth is concerned, to vegetable and animal life, to be accounted for? Is this all chance work? Is it by chance that light and heat cause plants to carry on their wonderful operations, trans.m.u.ting the inorganic into the organic, dead matter into living and life sustaining matter? Is it without a purpose that water instead of contracting, expands at the freezing point?--a fact to which is due that the earth north of the tropic is habitable for man or beast. It is no answer to this question to say that a few other substances have the same peculiarity, when no good end, that we can see, is thereby accomplished.

No man is so foolish as to deny that his eye was intended to enable him to see, because he cannot tell what the spleen was made for. It is, however, useless to dwell upon this subject. If a man denies that there is design in nature, he can with quite as good reason deny that there is any design in any or in all the works ever executed by man.

The conclusion of the whole matter is, that the denial of design in nature is virtually the denial of G.o.d. Mr. Darwin's theory does deny all design in nature, therefore, his theory is virtually atheistical; his theory, not he himself. He believes in a Creator. But when that Creator, millions on millions of ages ago, did something,--called matter and a living germ into existence,--and then abandoned the universe to itself to be controlled by chance and necessity, without any purpose on his part as to the result, or any intervention or guidance, then He is virtually consigned, so far as we are concerned, to non-existence. It has already been said that the most extreme of Mr. Darwin's admirers adopt and laud his theory, for the special reason that it banishes G.o.d from the world; that it enables them to account for design without referring it to the purpose or agency of G.o.d. This is done expressly by Buchner, Haeckel, Vogt, and Strauss. The opponents of Darwinism direct their objections princ.i.p.ally against this element of the doctrine. This, as was stated by Rev. Dr. Peabody, was the main ground of the earnest opposition of Aga.s.siz to the theory. America's great botanist, Dr. Asa Gray, avows himself an evolutionist; but he is not a Darwinian. Of that point we have the clearest possible proof. Mr. Darwin, after explicitly denying that the variations which have resulted in "the formation of the most perfectly adapted animals in the world, man included, were intentionally and specially guided," adds: "However much we may wish it, we can hardly follow Professor Asa Gray in his belief 'that variation has been led along certain beneficial lines' like a stream 'along definite and useful lines of irrigation.'"[58] If Mr. Darwin does not agree with Dr. Gray, Dr. Gray does not agree with Mr. Darwin. It is as to the exclusion of design from the operations of nature that our American, differs from the English, naturalist. This is the vital point.

The denial of final causes is the formative idea of Darwin's theory, and therefore no teleologist can be a Darwinian.

Dr. Gray quotes from another writer the sentence, "It is a singular fact, that when we can find how anything is done, our first conclusion seems to be that G.o.d did not do it;" and then adds, "I agree with the writer that this first conclusion is premature and unworthy; I will add, deplorable. Through what faults of dogmatism on the one hand, and skepticism on the other, it came to be so thought, we need not here consider. Let us hope, and I confidently expect, that it is not to last; that the religious faith which survived without a shock the notion of the fixedness of the earth itself, may equally outlast the notion of the absolute fixedness of the species which inhabit it; that in the future, even more than in the past, faith in an _order_, which is the basis of science, will not--as it cannot reasonably--be dissevered from faith in an _Ordainer_, which is the basis of religion."[59] We thank G.o.d for that sentence. It is the concluding sentence of Dr. Gray's address as ex-President of "The American a.s.sociation for the Advancement of Science," delivered August, 1872.

Dr. Gray goes further. He says, "The proposition that the things and events in nature were not designed to be so, if logically carried out, is doubtless tantamount to atheism." Again, "To us, a fortuitous Cosmos is simply inconceivable. The alternative is a designed Cosmos.... If Mr.

Darwin believes that the events which he supposes to have occurred and the results we behold around us were undirected and undesigned; or if the physicist believes that the natural forces to which he refers phenomena are uncaused and undirected, no argument is needed to show that such belief is atheistic."[60]

We have thus arrived at the answer to our question, What is Darwinism?

It is Atheism. This does not mean, as before said, that Mr. Darwin himself and all who adopt his views are atheists; but it means that his theory is atheistic; that the exclusion of design from nature is, as Dr.

Gray says, tantamount to atheism.

Among the last words of Strauss were these: "We demand for our universe the same piety which the devout man of old demanded for his G.o.d." "In the enormous machine of the universe, amid the incessant whirl and hiss of its jagged iron wheels, amid the deafening crash of its ponderous stamps and hammers, in the midst of this whole terrific commotion, man, a helpless and defenceless creature, finds himself placed, not secure for a moment that on an imprudent motion a wheel may not seize and rend him, or a hammer crush him to a powder. This sense of abandonment is at first something awful."[61]

Among the last words of Paul were these: "I know whom I have believed, and am persuaded that He is able to keep that which I have committed unto Him against that day.... The time of my departure is at hand. I have fought a good fight, I have finished my course, I have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid up for me a crown of righteousness, which the Lord, the righteous judge, shall give me at that day: and not to me only, but unto all them also that love his appearing."

FOOTNOTES:

[40] _Science and Scripture not Antagonistic, because Distinct in their Spheres of Thought_. A Lecture, by Rev. George Henslow, M. A., F. L. S., F. G. S. London, 1873, p. 1.

[41] _Gott und Natur_, p. 200.

[42] _Protoplasm; or, Matter and Life._ By Lionel S. Beale, M. B., F. R.

S. Third edition. London & Philadelphia, 1874, p. 345; and the whole chapter on Design.

[43] _Fallacies in the Hypothesis of Mr. Darwin_, by C. R. Bree, M. D., F. Z. S. London, 1872, p. 290.

[44] When Professor Huxley says, as quoted above, that he does not deny the possibility of miracles, he must use the word miracle in a sense peculiar to himself.

[45] _Jenaer Literaturzeitung_, January 3, 1874. In this number there is a notice by Doctor Haeckel of two books,--_Descendenzlehre und Darwinismus_, von Oscar Schmidt, Leipzig, 1873; and _Die Fortschritte des Darwinismus_, von J. W. Spengel, Coln and Leipzig, 1874; in which he says: "Erstens, um in Sachen der Descendenz-Theorie mitreden zu konnen, ein gewisser Grad von tieferer biologischer (sowohl morphologischer als physiologischer) Bildung unentbehrlich, den die meistzen von jenen Auctoren (the opposers of the theory) nicht besitzen. Zweitens ist fur ein klares und zutreffendes Urtheil in diesem Sachen eine rucksichtslose Hingabe an vernunftgema.s.se Erkenntniss und eine dadurch bedingte Resignation auf uralte, liebgewordene und tief vererbte Vorurtheile erforderlich, zu welcher sich die wenigsten entschliesen konnen."

[46] In his _Naturlische Schopfungsgeschichte_, Haeckel is still more exclusive. When he comes to answer the objections to the evolution, or, as he commonly calls it, the descendence theory, he dismisses the objections derived from religion, as unworthy of notice, with the remark that all Glaube ist Aberglaube; all faith is superst.i.tion. The objections from _a priori_, or intuitive truths, are disposed of in an equally summary manner, by denying that there are any such truths, and a.s.serting that all our knowledge is from the senses. The objection that so many distinguished naturalists reject the theory, he considers more at length. First, many have grown old in another way of thinking and cannot be expected to change. Second, many are collectors of facts, without studying their relations, or are dest.i.tute of the genius for generalization. No amount of material makes a building. Others, again, are specialists. It is not enough that a man should be versed in one department; he must be at home in all: in Botany, Zoology, Comparative Anatomy, Biology, Geology, and Palaeontology. He must be able to survey the whole field. Fourthly, and mainly, naturalists are generally lamentably deficient in philosophical culture and in a philosophical spirit. "The immovable edifice of the true, monistic science, or what is the same thing, natural science, can only arise through the most intimate interaction and mutual interpenetration of philosophy and observation (Philosophie und Empirie)." pp. 638-641. It is only a select few, therefore, of learned and philosophical monistic materialists, who are ent.i.tled to be heard on questions of the highest moment to every individual man, and to human society.

[47] This short but significant sentence is omitted in the excellent translation of Strauss's book, by Mathilde Blind, republished in New York, by Henry Holt & Company, 1873.

[48] _The Fallacies of Darwinism_, by C. R. Bree, M. D., p. 308.

[49] _The Fallacies of Darwinism_, p. 305.

[50] _Bibliotheca Sacra_, 1857, p. 861.

[51] _The Story of Earth and Man_, p. 358.

[52] Dr. Bree, p. 275. We presume geologists differ in the terms which they use to designate strata. Aga.s.siz calls the oldest containing fossil, the sub-Cambrian. Princ.i.p.al Dawson calls the oldest the Laurentian, and places the first vertebrates in the Silurian. This is of no moment as to the argument. The important fact is that each species is distinct as soon as it appears; and that many have remained to the present time.

[53] _Atlantic Monthly_, January, 1874.

[54] We have heard a story of a gentleman who gave an artist a commission for a historical painting, and suggested as the subject, the Pa.s.sage of the Israelites over the Red Sea. In due time he was informed that his picture was finished, and was shown by the artist a large canvas painted red. "What is that?" he asked. "Why," says the artist, "that is the Red Sea." "But where are the Israelites?" "Oh, they have pa.s.sed over." "And where are the Egyptians?" "They are under the sea."

[55] _As Regards Protoplasm in Relation to Professor Huxley's Essay an the Physical Basis of Life_. By Dr. James H. Stirling. See, also, _Physiological Anatomy and Physiology of Man_, by L. S. Beale; also, _The Mystery of Life in Reply to Dr. Gull's Attack on the Theory of Vitality_. By L. S. Beale, M. D., 1871.

[56] The address delivered by Sir William Thomson, as President of the British a.s.sociation at its meeting in Edinburgh, 1871.